Ask HN: How do you manage your digital legacy for after you die? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How do you manage your digital legacy for after you die?

16 pointsorbanlevi16 comments

Ofc after you die, doesnt matter in the first place, but to be honest, I've been thinking about what my wife would have to deal with digitally when I'm gone. All accounts on the internet, my old pictures in Google Drive, documentation and things like that.

I have password manager, so I pass this to my wife it can be easy to reach the profiles, but what else can I do to help / easier the whole process?

View on HN

Password manager is the right first step. A few others worth adding:

  - A "death folder" document (encrypted, in the password manager) listing every
    account, what's in it, and what to do with it. Google/Apple both have inactive
    account managers built in — most people don't know they exist.

  - For photos: make sure at least one copy lives somewhere your wife already has
    independent access to, not just through your credentials.

  - For things that matter: write it down in plain language. Not just passwords —
    context. Why you kept something, what it means.

  On the AI side: I've been thinking about this in the context of agent memory
  persistence (building Cathedral — a memory layer for AI agents). The same problem
  exists: identity and context that only lives in one place, not transferable.
  Structured memory exports are something we're working toward for exactly this reason.

I am going to say the opposite. There are two classes of digital information for me.

1. What my wife cares about: mostly financial. My wife is a joint account holder on everything she can be. Thats everything but retirement accounts. She is the beneficiary on those. I send her statements for those every year and we have a shared spreadsheet.

On the other hand, I think people overestimate how much people will care about your pictures. It’s like no one wants to see your vacation photos. For the ones that she does care about, we just share them.

I set up a Dead Man's Switch. It sends me an email with a link every day. If I click it, I acknowledge that I am alive and nothing happens. If I do not, after a grace period and more reminders, it sends an email to my wife with a password-protected file. I have listed all our accounts, passwords, assets, etc., along with instructions on what to do and whom to ask for help.

Disclaimer: I sell digital legacy products. However, I also honestly use them, and some of these tools I distribute for free and have made open-source.

Wow, why every day and not weekly? Every day seems too frequent.

I also thought that, but I like it this way. It supports weekly checks as well.

Wow, that contains a fatal weakness (no pun intended), that She won't assume the email is spam (or a scam) and just delete it without opening it.

It's quite possible for you (or anyone who uses your work) to have the outcome they were trying to prevent because of this.

She knows about it, so she will actually be expecting it.

But yes, that is indeed a risk, particularly for other family members who don't know there is an email for them.

Best strategy is to minimise your digital footprint. There are non-negotiable things like: bank accounts, mortgages and the like. Internet accounts, books, pics, videos are all expendable

Interesting, but every single day? That’s nuts. What if, for some reason, you didn't have internet access for a few days?

You better watch out for is 2FA, sometimes even with passwords people still get locked out, so backup codes can help.

This is a good point, especially with a lot of 2FA being tied to phone numbers.

My dad set me up as his legacy contact for his Apple account, and he uses their Passwords app. But I’ll need to remember to keep his phone (and the bill paid) until I can be sure the 2FA won’t be needed for something.

While I’m sure presenting a death certificate to a bank would be enough to trigger processes that won’t need it, I’m betting having that access would make many things easier.

I heard someone talking about the Dead Hand system that lowkey sounds as interesting as hell gonna try it out

I want to know too, mine is using pure iCloud

On your iPhone got to Settings > Apple Account (the big block with your name at the top) > Sign-In & Security > Legacy Contact > Set Up

While you’re in there, setup a Recovery Contact too, if you don’t already have one.

hard disk from the 90s

delete all

Reply on news.ycombinator.com